Read More

This year the new grades will be introduced for English language, English literature, and maths GCSEs only.

How does the new grading system translate?

Winifred Holtby students take their exams (Image: Phil Dawes)

Along with a more rigorous marking system, the new grades will make it hard to compare a school’s results with their achievements in a previous year.

There are also more boundaries at the higher end of the scale, meaning proportionately fewer students are expected to achieve the top ‘9’ score than the number of students who achieved ‘A*’ grades in previous years.

Read More

The old and new systems cannot directly compare, but they do fall into these boundaries:

A-A* = 7-9

C–B = 4-6

G-D = 1-3

A ‘5’, the government benchmark, should be considered a ‘strong pass’ and a ‘4’ considered a ‘standard pass’.

Children who do not achieve a ‘4’ in English and maths will need to continue to study these subjects as part of their post-16 education.

The future

Students take exams

Other subjects will be translated to the new scale in the coming years, and until 2020 exam certificates will have a combination of number and letter grades as students take a mixture of ‘old’ and ‘new’ GCSEs.

Read More

More education news

Progress 8

Introduced last year, pupils’ Progress 8 score is only calculated to assess their school’s performance.

It subtracts their Attainment 8 score from what they were predicted to achieve at GCSE before they left primary school.

Achieving what they were expected to results in a ‘0’ score. The Government expects schools to achieve a Progress 8 score of -0.5 or higher as standard – which means all pupils on average achieve half a grade less than was expected at primary school.